Best 556 Powder?

[Send it...]

TAC is my vote.

[Delta-3]

Win 748 has always been a good powder for me from 55-77g bullets. It's also works great for .308/7.62. My fallback powder for 5.56 is AA 2230.
There are quite a few powders that will work well for 5.56 loads. Expensive to do these days but trial & error working up loads is the only way to know for sure.

[BobinNC]

I went through my powder cupboard today, and I had the following suitable powders for 5.56

H322 = less than 1 lb.
H335 = 1 lb.
AA 2230 = 1 lb.
CFE223 = less than 1 lb.
RL-12 = less than 2 lbs.
TAC = 8 lbs


So which is best?? The one I have the most of......

[Molon]

VihtaVuori N140 produces outstanding accuracy and velocity standard deviations with heavy OTM bullets fired from semi-automatic AR-15s. The 10-shot string shown in the chronograph printout below has a standard deviation of 4 FPS when fired from a 20" Colt barrel.





Depending upon the barrel used in the AR-15 build, VihtaVuori N140 has produced 1/2 MOA 10-shot groups at 100 yards using heavy OTM bullets.








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[markm]

God I hope Pappabear doesn't see this N140 info. He'll be pulling up to my house with a bunch of it some day.

[BuzzinSATX]

By a LOT of accounts I’ve read, N135 and N140 are excellent powders for .223 and .308

There is a long term poster that I trust over on The High Road forum who has much more experience than I with it and this is what he told me:

“N140 will closely approximate the performance of Varget.

N135 will approximate the performance of H4895, but the relationship is not quite as close as N140-Varget. At least as I have observed “

I have switched my pistol reloading, 95% of all my reloading, to Vihtavuori powders, specifically N320, N340, and getting ready to start working with 3N37.

I was a big Win 231 guy but VV powders are much cleaner. Most are single base.

Good info on this download:

https://www.vihtavuori.com/wp-conten...e_2022_ENG.pdf


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[Molon]

getting ready to start working with 3N37.

3N37 works well with 147 grain bullets in 9mm Parbellum. It can produce single-digit standard deviations for 10-shot strings over the chronograph and extreme spreads of less than one inch for 10-shot groups at 25 yards using the Hornady 147 grain XTP.










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[markm]

Hey, Molon.

I have a question on prep/procedure for testing any given rifle load... Do you allow for fouling the barrel into a given powder? Start from a clean bore, etc?

I will generally fire at least 3-5 rounds when changing powder or if last powder fired is unknown. But I was curious what your approach might be.

Thanks.

[BuzzinSATX]

3N37 works well with 147 grain bullets in 9mm Parbellum. It can produce single-digit standard deviations for 10-shot strings over the chronograph and extreme spreads of less than one inch for 10-shot groups at 25 yards using the Hornady 147 grain XTP.










....

Thanks for the info. I was looking at my next RMR order to go with either the 135 or 147 FMJ TC bullets to see how I like them.


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[Molon]

Hey, Molon.

I have a question on prep/procedure for testing any given rifle load... Do you allow for fouling the barrel into a given powder? Start from a clean bore, etc?

I will generally fire at least 3-5 rounds when changing powder or if last powder fired is unknown. But I was curious what your approach might be.

Thanks.

Same, same.